


Oh Source Of My Misery

by NoNessa (sunmyano)



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Challenge Response, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Internal Monologue, Missing Scene, One Shot, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 06:52:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9981662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunmyano/pseuds/NoNessa
Summary: Missing Scene from "A Rebellious Woman": Seeing his wife in the courtroom wakes Athos's demons and reminds him of a sad song from his childhood. How will he calm his troubled soul?One-shot in response to the Musketeers "Saturday Story" challenge, favourite song edition.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a one-shot response to the Saturday Story challenge of the Musketeers BBC UK Facebook group. This time, the story had to be inspired by a song. So I went ahead and used an old French folk song Athos might have known, "Au bord d'une fontaine".
> 
> Disclaimer: The Musketeers and its characters are the property of the BBC. No copyright infringement is intended.
> 
> Copyright Note: The song "Au bord d'une fontaine" by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) and its words are in the Public Domain.
> 
> You can listen to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uLhZXWIdXo
> 
> Hope you enjoy the story! Please let me know how you liked it. =)

 

Oh Source Of My Misery

 

Time slowed down. The seconds melted into a glutinous mess. I felt as though my feet were frozen to the ground. But they kept walking.

Wide-eyed I stared at the woman ahead of me.  
The cardinal had called her Madame de la Chapelle. It was a lie! Incredulous, I inched forward. As I drew nearer, I knew that my eyes had not betrayed me. It was Anne ...

But Anne was dead. At Pinon, I had seen her ghost, come to take revenge. I felt my lips move without speaking as mad thoughts whirled through my head. My drunk fantasy had been real. And now she was here, in the flesh, lying to the world.

"This woman is a liar!" I screamed. Livid with rage I pushed through the iron grille, ready to grab her, to strangle her, to give her the punishment she deserved. "She is not even who she claims to be. She is a convicted criminal!" I blurted out, voicing whatever accusation rushed through my brain.

Commotion had risen around me. But I felt numb to it. At once my friends were upon me. They combined their forces to push me back. Yet the strength of three Musketeers was not enough to contain my rage. I kept struggling, screaming madly at the fiend before me.

Then Treville grabbed my arm, so firmly that it hurt. When he shouted at me to calm down, I relaxed. It was an order I could not ignore. Reluctantly I controlled my perturbed feelings.

As I moved away from the captain, my gaze fell on Ninon. She was on her feet, gawping at me in horror. The fearful glow in her blue eyes reminded me of an old song. At once its words popped into my head, unbidden:

"L'amour charmait ma vie, l'amour fait mon malheur..."

I suppressed a shudder. The words had hit a nerve, painfully. I only wanted to be alone now. My friends did not have to see how shaken I was. Quickly I left the courtroom.

Aimlessly, I wandered through the cloisters. Since everyone was in the courtroom to attend Richelieu's mockery of justice, I had them to myself. It was a mercy. Slowly I walked on through the welcome half-darkness, basking in self-pity. Out of nowhere, the ballad ambushed me again.

"Félicité passée, qui ne peut revenir..."

Why did this awful song come back to pester me? It made me want to run and hide. With a heavy sigh, I slunk into a dark recess at the end of the hall. Panting I leaned against a stone pillar. Now I remembered. Catherine had sung it to me. We had still been children then, thinking nothing of it.

And now, by some trick of fate, this damned song had become the story of my life. I was truly cursed.

"Tourment de ma pensée..." the lines went on in my head. I wanted to bang it against the wall. But that would not stop them. "Que n'ai je, en te perdant, perdu le souvenir!"

I sank to the floor. It was too much to take. Any other man would have sobbed now. But my tears had dried up years ago, on the day I had hanged my wife. And now Anne was here, like a curse, bound to haunt me for the rest of my days.

No. I punched the hard stone wall. It sobered me up a little, like a bucket of ice water would, after drowning my sorrow in too much wine. After a moment I got back on my feet.

I had no time to listen to the melancholic chants in my head. Ninon needed me. It was my duty to protect her. If I got carried away now, she might lose her life at the hands of my treacherous wife. And then, her blood would taint my hands forever.

I had to live with the truth: Anne would always be a part of me. I could not simply shake her off like an annoying tune. At least about this, the song was right:

It is the torment of my thoughts that I have not lost the memory by losing you.


End file.
